To throw in another review among many, I’d just like to say that this game was a legitimately fun experience for me, but in retrospect. As I was playing through the roughly 45 minute prologue (all the while holding the confirm button to make the cutscenes go by faster), I couldn’t have been bothered to care about any of the characters being introduced, or the events that were transpiring. The mechanics tutorial was entertaining (in fact, barring a minor issue that I’ll get into later, the quicktime events are by far a great idea which, I believe, set this game apart from the majority of its contemporaries), but when the characters would start to talk, a malaise would set itself upon me, and I would slouch in my chair, speed-reading over the dialogue as it zoomed by. By the time Ch. 1 had begun, I was fairly certain that I was going to gleam nothing of merit from the game, besides the fun little mechanics, and so I was wading through cutscenes just to get it over with. This would continue until I reached the flashback, and by George, I sure am glad I held out until then, because not only was the scene itself fun to watch (I thought the shot-in-a-shot effect was really cool, great work on that) but the fetish material it delivered was excellent. And from that scene on, the game was actually engaging, and I not only started to have fun, but kept having fun all the way 'til the end. Good stuff! A slow start, sure, but good nonetheless.
Now, I tend to go into these games effectively blind, so I was surprised to see on the forums that people not only had some trouble with the combat mechanics, but that it was a major point of contention against the game’s design. Sure, I too struggled at one point, dropping pretty low on HP, but that was because I honestly wasn’t paying attention, and I was able to recover and continue without any real problem by just paying attention & saving after every fight. In fact, I don’t think I even game-over’d once. Maybe I’m secretly goated with the sauce? No clue.
Some (highly opinionated) suggestions, because there were a few things that did bother me, but I think they can be fairly easily resolved:
For one, and this is obviously the biggest issue I have, the prologue is long, unengaging, and most irritatingly, because this is a demo, all of the setup it’s laying out feels pointless. The more updates that come out will most assuredly remedy this, but as it stands, I didn’t care for it, and wouldn’t mind either a rewrite that condenses the longevity/made the characters involved more fun to read (lots of work, and ‘more fun to read’ is about as vague as it gets, I know) or a skip button (especially since, with the release of different versions, I won’t be able to transfer saves, and will have to start from the beginning again, losing all that valuable time every single replay).
For the people that don’t take well to the combat, I think an easy mode wouldn’t in any way take from the game, and would be super easy to implement. Enemy HP and Damage could be halved with a conditional branch attached to a switch/Player HP, Defense, & Damage could be doubled //OR// the width of the combat circle could be locked at its largest size/the velocity of the expanding circle could be lowered. Regardless, an easy mode would at least abate some of the ire generated from the combat system, as I see the biggest complaints are that people are getting swept by enemies after a couple mistakes. So either make the mistakes harder to come by, or less punishing in this hypothetical easy mode. And leave scripted fights the same regardless of the version for obvious reasons.
And for a hyper-specific suggestion, could you consider putting in some sort of semi-transparent black background behind the combat circles so that they aren’t obfuscated by background elements? The most egregious offense I could find I’ve screenshotted here:
Issue
You could then just invert the colors of the braided circle to compensate, then people like me, who can’t see too well to begin with, won’t have to fight through a dense UI. I made a mockup in paint[dot]net to illustrate what I mean:
Fix Mockup
Overall, good game, great mechanics & gameplay, good writing and some great scenes once it gets rolling, it just takes a bit to get there. I liked the mythology pages strewn throughout the world, too, those were fun to read. Keep up the great work! It’s talent like this that may well make something amazing, in due time.
